Monday, September 21, 2015

Grief and the Greeks



The lecturer before the play said something very interesting: The Greeks know how to grieve.

There was a lot of grieving in the play Electra and the character Electra did a lot of grieving throughout it. A lot of grieving.

Electra wore black, a mourning color. She (and the chorus) made very pained sounds when they found out about the death of Orestes. (For anyone who missed it, the lecturer made an interesting point about that too. He made us practice the Greek mourning sounds. They come from the diaphragm, he explained. The director encouraged the actors to use those raw, emotional sounds for the intense grieving scenes.) The characters also would beat on their chests as a physical gesture of grief. (The lecturer talked about other gestures like hair pulling and face stretching, which were not shown in the play.)

The Greeks had a great respect for the dead. They had complex beliefs in what would happen to the dead and their ceremonies and rituals attest to that. Mourning was to be expected. Crying, lamenting, grieving—it was all part of the process, specifically during the funeral. Also, while I couldn’t find an ancient time period, apparently the current official Greek Orthodox set grieving period is 40 days. I just thought that was interesting.


I think we can identify with the Greeks and their grief. Like humans thousands of years ago, we feel the pain of losing loved ones today. We may cry. We may call out to our God. We may grieve like Electra. We can connect at least on some level with her. Grief is a human emotion that every single one of us has felt or will feel.

2 comments:

  1. I like how you not only pointed out an aspect of Greek culture but you related it to us today and tied it to all human nature - we all grieve, we all cry. Tragedy wasn't limited to the Greeks time and isn't limited to ours.

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  2. I watched the 1962 film, and Electra wore black and even cut off all her hair as a sign of grief. She was in this melancholy state throughout the whole film, showing us that grief really is a part of a Greek tragedy, and a part of life.

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